Pete Brooks

Course Director MA Performance Design & Practice

Biography

Pete Brooks is a writer/director with a long history of working professionally in the area of postdramatic theatre. The first company he co-founded, Impact Theatre Co-operative, is widely considered the most influential of the late twentieth-century British performance companies.

Brooks is unusual in that he has worked across a broad range of the performance spectrum: in 2002 he had projects running concurrently at the Queen’s Theatre in London’s West End and at The National Review of Live Art. Since 2004, he has worked primarily with, and is joint artistic director of, Imitating the Dog (ITD), a company which specializes in transmedial stage performance as well as large scale projection projects. IDT tours widely internationally and also undertakes commissioned projects in Britain and abroad. Since 2004, ITD has been generously supported by Arts Council England and the British Council, and will receive National Portfolio funding from April 2018.

Research interests

Digital; Transmedial; Performance; Postdramatic; Theatre.

Research statement

My current research interest is focused on the way in which transmedial scenography is impacting on postdramatic dramaturgy. In particular, I am interested in how, in the twenty-first century, stories are being reinvented on the postdramatic stage, taking their cues from the postmodern novel, cinema and ‘post genre’ television fiction. I consider my practice to be an investigation into the dramaturgical possibilities opened up by new digital technologies and the different way in which the audience approaches reading the transmedial performance space.